“Felt nothing yet?” Devine inquired eagerly. “There’s a kind of hollow yonder running into the thicket.”
Weston made no answer, but he turned in among the willows, and for half an hour or so they stumbled and floundered among the clinging branches. Still there was no deflection of the fork, and when at length they stopped again, gasping and dripping with perspiration, Devine laughed rather grimly.
“Oh, give it a rest; I guess that’s what it wants,” he said. “I’ll hang on for another half-hour, and then I’m going prospecting on my own account. We’ve got to strike water.”
That, at least, was evident. They were parched with thirst and it was very hot. No breath of air seemed to enter that dense thicket, and a cloud of tormenting flies hung about them. Weston’s head was throbbing with the heat, and his sight seemed dazed. Both of them were dusty, ragged, grim of face, and worn with travel, and the longing for even a few drops of muddy liquid was becoming almost insupportable.
It was only by a strenuous effort that Weston went on again. He felt scarcely capable of further exertion, but he could not overcome the horrible bodily craving that seemed to grow stronger with every pulsation of his fevered blood, and he plodded on into the thicket very wearily. At length Devine saw the twig bend downward for a moment in his hands,
“You did that?” he asked sharply.
“No,” said Weston in a strained voice, “I certainly did not.”
“Let me take hold,” said Devine, and when Weston handed the fork to him he walked back a few paces and crossed the same spot again. The fork, however, pointed straight in front of him. He threw it down and said nothing, but Weston looked at him with a little grim smile.
“I’ve heard it said that anybody could do it, but that’s not my experience,” he observed.
Devine’s gesture might have expressed anything.